A TRUMPY AMTRAK?

Pajamas Media contributor Ashley McCulley offers "Make Amtrak Great Again."  Her central thesis is sensible national politics.

If Amtrak is the national rail operator of the United States, then it should serve the United States. Not just the Northeast Corridor. Not just the West Coast. For too long, the national agency has been serving only a handful of our population: people who live and work in major coastal cities and rely on rail for daily commuting — you and I both know the dominating voting demographic there. Having lived in Southern California, I can tell you that Amtrak is the best way to get between San Diego and Los Angeles unless you enjoy wasting away in traffic. When we lived in Fredericksburg, Va., Amtrak was a fantastic option for stress-free trips to D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City. All of that said, relegating Amtrak to mere commuting purposes is a disservice to the rail and the taxpayers who fund it.

The challenge is in the how best serve the United States.  There has never been a coherent business model for covering the national network.  The Northeast Corridor get their rolling gated community in the form of Acela trains with premium and business class seating, as well as Northeast Regional trains offering business and coach class seating, and no honoring of the commuter train tickets operated by regional authorities.  The regional operators in North Carolina, Chicagoland, and California have to come up with state money to offer train service that is reasonably comfortable and dependable.

STILL NOT GETTING THROUGH.

It wasn't even Friday the Thirteenth, and Amtrak's Chicago to California trains were the medium-sized trains that couldn't.

Late arrivals are, to a degree, preordained for Amtrak’s long-distance trains on the first weekend of Daylight Saving Time — but not to the extent experienced by the California Zephyr and Southwest Chief.

When clocks advance by one hour every spring (except in Arizona, which does not observe Daylight Saving Time), Amtrak trains that may be on time at 2 a.m. local time become one hour late, unless a special schedule is implemented, using a different train number, that accounts for the time change. In that case, times are adjusted by one hour at stations the train serves after 2 a.m. Sunday.

Service marginally impacted by last weekend’s hour loss includes eastbound of the Empire Builders arriving Tuesday, March 10, and today (March 11) in Chicago. Both had their already-short 5½-hour equipment turnarounds reduced by an hour, reflecting tardy westbound arrivals that dealt with high wind warnings and freight congestion. Both departed two hours behind schedule; Tuesday’s arrival in Chicago was at 8:14 p.m., 3 hours, 29 minutes late.

The spring clock change was incidental.  The dependability of those trains has been questionable all winter, and the same problems surfaced again last weekend.

Southwest Chief No. 1003 that departed Chicago on Saturday, March 7, was another story. The train was given an extra hour to get to Los Angeles, with a scheduled arrival of 8:57 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Monday, March 9. The fact that it arrived at 10:40 p.m., 13 hours, 43 minutes late, is symptomatic of increasing issues of breakdowns en route for the long-distance trains.

Troubles began at Albuquerque, N.M., according to alerts shared with passengers. The lengthy stop, a 1,500-mile inspection point, is where “equipment adjustment and removal” took place. The resulting 90-minute pause, however, was dwarfed by a five-hour, 15-minute stop at Gallup, N.M. Another two-hour delay came between Gallup and Winslow, Ariz., and three hours more were lost at Kingman, Ariz., while the train waited for an operating crew to relieve compatriots whose federally mandated hours-of-service limits had expired.

That was the worst outing, but not the only bad outing.  Conditions were little better for the California Zephyr.

An Amtrak alert also revealed that an “ongoing mechanical concern” befell the westbound California Zephyr departing Chicago on March 6. The train was delayed four hours between Green River and Provo, Utah, “and will be met at Salt Lake City by the mechanical team who will further evaluate this concern,” according to the unusually candid alert. The train arrived Sunday morning at 4:55 a.m. and departed at 8:15 a.m., by then seven hours, 35 minutes late.

While the beleaguered westbound Zephyr was in the Salt Lake City station, its eastbound counterpart No. 1006 arrived early, but departed two hours, 20 minutes late,  following “equipment adjustments and removal.”

Trains asked Amtrak for more specifics on the issues of both trains on Monday, March 9, but the railroad has yet to respond.

I wonder if the online trainwatchers who like to hang out on the Galesburg channel stayed up to watch these moves, which included at least one bad-ordered car cut at Galesburg.  It's frustrating enough when a westbound California train leaves Chicago with low water in the dining car (take care of other things during a foreshortened turnaround in Chicago and top up the water at Galesburg) and if anything the troubles are getting worse.  There's only so much the yard crews can do to keep aging stock rolling.

The fact the vast majority of Amtrak trains leave their terminals in good shape and operate on time is a testament to mechanical forces that keep the company’s aging rolling stock in motion. But last weekend’s events show that an increasing number of significant breakdowns en route are disruptive on a far-flung network that has few current options for equipment substitution.

But Amtrak hope to scrape together enough stock to strengthen formations for the summer.

Adding one car to every Southwest Chief, for instance, requires five cars of that type. The 30- to 45-year-old equipment typically gets cycled through periodic maintenance when demand is lighter. The Chief, which has been running since the New Year holiday with a single sleeping car plus roomettes in the train’s transition sleeper, has been a tough ticket. Chicago-Los Angeles roomette fares through March 15 range from $806 to $1,438 (four rooms were left at this price for March 14 as of Thursday). There is also one date where roomettes are sold out.

But later this month, another full sleeping car is being added to every Southwest Chief through the summer, along with a full baggage car. A third coach will be added in April, once Colorado’s Winter Park Express finishes its season. This will help accommodate campers destined to and from the Philmont Scout Ranch, a bus ride away from the train’s stop in Raton, N.M.

The Scouts travel in patrols and troops and there's not enough sleeper space, nor does "Be Prepared" include "to pay sleeper fare."  Thus they ride coach.

FREQUENCY, CONNECTIVITY, AND DEPENDABILITY.

That's the Magic Triangle of dependable transportation.  Legislative wishful thinking alone will not make it so.

Regional rail networks with high-frequency trains are vital to the future of regions throughout the country. Getting them soon requires that planning start now.

A bill currently in the Illinois Legislature advances frequent passenger rail service by directing the Illinois Department of Transportation to plan for hourly service, at minimum, in several strategic corridors. This legislation requires the Illinois Department of Transportation to incorporate these service frequency goals into the Illinois State Rail Plan and into the Long-Range Statewide Transportation Plan.

The release notes that small plans lead to small outcomes.

Unfortunately, railroad planners in the United States take the opposite tack. Planning for intercity passenger rail is usually directed by staff at state departments of transportation. They plan based on what seems plausible given current levels of legislative support and funding, along with past practices. The governing principle is to proceed cautiously, “testing” the market and building up frequency from there.

That might be what happens whenever government funds are involved.  Process is the bureaucrat's most important product.  But process with resources is better than wishful thinking without resources.

Yes, you can pass legislation that aspires to hourly trains between Chicago and St. Louis, and that's relatively cheap, but restoring the second track on the Alton Route and providing enough rolling stock to cover the additional trains (which often doesn't happen in foul weather) implies "future obligations".  Hourly service for Milwaukee with trains every two hours for Green Bay never happened, even before Interstate Highways 94-43-41 were in place, and pretending Wisconsin will come up with the money is a stretch.  Those hourly trains for Louisville?  Sell that to Indiana and Kentucky and come up with a value proposition for motorists.

GETTING THROUGH.

Cold Spring Shops got a heavy dose of snow at the beginning of Advent, which melted by Christmas, and there wasn't much snow during the late January cold snap.  It's different on the coasts.  Passenger Rail advocates have been making much about "I-80 closes, but California Zephyr gets through Sierras."  True though that is, it isn't impressing many people.

The eastbound California Zephyr arrived in Truckee today (Feb. 20) just after 1 a.m. Pacific Time, 11 hours late. But it won the battle against massive snowdrifts that had shut down parallel Interstate 80 through the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Televised news reports like this one described multiple I-80 closures throughout a week that saw trapped cross-country skiers lose their lives in an avalanche. But they almost never mentioned that Union Pacific track crews kept the route open for its freight trains and the Zephyr despite the conditions.

Thursday afternoon’s train no. 6 had departed Colfax, Calif., two hours late. Westbound counterpart no. 5 had been running an hour behind schedule leaving Truckee and lost two hours heading though the increasingly heavy snow as I-80 was being closed to all traffic. Status reports from Amtrak and other sources indicate that the eastbound’s lead locomotive stalled out on the climb between Colfax and Truckee. A relief engine was called and the Zephyr was finally able to proceed. As of Friday afternoon, it remained more than 11 hours late approaching Salt Lake City.

The avalanche that closed highways and prompted travel restrictions beginning Tuesday, Feb. 17, had resulted in delays to eastbound Zephyrs no more than one hour and 45 minutes until the rescue of no. 6 Thursday evening. The longest westbound delay occurred Wednesday when the CZ arrived almost seven hours late into Colfax.

More than 90 inches of snow has fallen in the Sierra Nevada since midweek; another storm is predicted this weekend. Zephyr coach seats were sold out in both directions between Sacramento and Reno on Friday and Sunday.

The off-peak Zephyr consist is two Superliner coaches and two or three sleepers.  There might not be many seats available, depending on who is booking coach seats for longer trips.  Donner Summit no longer has the snow sheds that once protected trains.   On the other hand, three score and fourteen years ago a westbound City of San Francisco was stuck in the snow up there for several days.

Elsewhere in mountain railroading, a Swiss passenger train had a close encounter with a snow slide.

Avalanches from heavy snowfall in the European Alps claimed more lives over the weekend, as a train was derailed by a snow slide in Switzerland on Monday and roads and villages around Mont Blanc were closed or placed under evacuation orders.

As large areas of the western Alps remained under a high risk of avalanche – following a week in which alerts reached category 5, the highest level – Swiss police said a train derailment caused by an avalanche injured five people near the town of Goppenstein.

The incident in Switzerland followed a series of deadly avalanches in the Alps in recent days involving skiers.

On Friday, two Britons were among three skiers killed in an avalanche while being accompanied by an instructor in Val d’Isère, in south-east France.

A French national, who was skiing alone, was also killed. The Albertville prosecutor, Benoît Bachelet, said the ski instructor, who avoided injury, tested negative after taking blood and drug tests. He added that another Briton had sustained minor injuries.

In another incident on Sunday, an avalanche claimed the lives of two skiers on the Italian side of Mont Blanc.

The incident occurred at about 11am in the Couloir Vesses, a popular off-piste route in Courmayeur, located in the upper Val Veny, near the border with France and Switzerland.

The Goppenstein snow slide took passengers by surprise.  There was one passenger recorded as referring to it as "normal" (given the way the railway is laid out, perhaps) until it proved to be a little stronger than normal.  But Switzerland was spared a replay of the Wellington disaster on the old Great Northern crossing of Stevens Pass.

Back country skiing can be dangerous on any mountain.  Condolences to the families of the skiers lost.

HERE WE GO AGAIN.

Two weeks ago, as the polar vortex January winter did what it did, we noted, "Amtrak, which did not cover itself with glory a year ago, is cancelling trains even before the storm: how is it that weather forecasters can anticipate storm arrivals more precisely than Amtrak?"

FRIDAY WILL BE A SNOW DAY FOR CHICAGO OFFICE WORKERS.

No longer do railroads employ legions of extra men to shovel out switch points and service the heaters.  Thus when cold and snow are on offer, management prefers to avoid diverging moves where practicable.  "With severe cold forecast for the Chicago region, Metra has made the decision to operate reduced schedules on all its lines on Friday, Jan. 23."  The reduced schedules are for the most part the Saturday schedules, hourly or two-hourly for much of the day, with very few expresses and none of the Elmhurst or Congress Park turnback trains, and McHenry is out of luck.

COME UP WITH A BETTER VALUE PROPOSITION.

Passenger Rail advocate Theo Anderson thinks he's being provocative.  "You Really Expect Me to Drive to Louisville?"

I was on a Chicago L train recently, staring at a picture of a glass of bourbon, when I blurted out: “That’s crazy.”

An ad for Louisville, running along the top of the railcar, provoked the outburst. The tag line said “Short Drive. Tall Pours.”

It makes sense to pitch Louisville as a getaway destination for Chicagoans. It’s a fine city. It has an “urban bourbon trail” that the city’s tourism website calls it a “curated collection of local bars and restaurants,” with “some of the city’s largest collections of Bourbon and in most cases even Bourbon-infused cuisine.”

That’s great. But it’s crazy to call the nearly 300-mile, five-hour car trip to Louisville a “short drive.” It’s even crazier that you can’t take a train from Chicago to Louisville. There’s barely even service from Chicago to Indianapolis. You can take an Amtrak train twice a week and arrive downtown in the middle of the night.

To be fair, Indiana is the main source of this insanity. The state’s governor cut the $3 million annual subsidy for Amtrak’s Hoosier State line in 2019, which killed the only usable train service between Indianapolis and Chicago. But even that train ran just three days a week.

Sadly, Indianapolis has never been serious about offering passenger-train service, despite being right in the heart of the most railroad-dense region in the nation and 200 miles from Chicago—with a major research university, Purdue, halfway between.

In a related post, he makes the argument that there's no "convenience" in being able to drive from Chicago to Indianapolis, let alone to continue to Louisville.

Cars are superior to trains and transit, so the theory goes, because they offer freedom. But a couple of times a year, when the bus doesn’t work out, I actually drive the Chicago-Indy route. It’s then, when I’m behind the wheel, that the madness and absurdity of this idea becomes horribly clear.

You can set your own schedule, sure. But cars subvert freedom in so many ways. The loan payments and the cost of gas, repairs, and insurance, for starters. And then the endless stresses of the road. The stretch of Interstate 65 that connects Indianapolis and Chicago ranks 58th of the 100 “most loathed” highways in the U.S. The whole route is jammed with semi trucks. And northern Indiana is especially prone to wind gusts. Lanes are often closed for repairs and construction for long stretches. And that’s the least of it, in some ways. Because getting to I-65 means navigating the stop-and-go traffic on the highways that wrap around Chicago.

When you’re stuck in Chicago traffic or, even worse, going 75+ mph in a narrow construction zone, pinned between concrete barriers on one side and a semi on the other, you have to wonder: If we can’t make trains work here, can we make them work anywhere?

I confess that whenever my travels take me anywhere that involves Indianapolis, it's easier from DeKalb to proceed by way of Interstate 39 south from Rochelle and via Interstate 74 southeast from Bloomington.  That gripe he makes about the semis on Interstate 65 (my bypass routing gets its share as well, there are a lot of fleet operators who don't mind going a few more miles around to avoid the tollways) could be material for a separate stock-taking post, about the railroads leaving the retail intermodal money on the table.

All the same, I'm not sure Passenger Rail advocates make a case for more trains by appealing to their own experience.  Over the Festive Season, the latest issue of Trains hit the Cold Spring Shops mailbox, with an article about the busiest Amtrak stop in Iowa.  That would be Osceola, which is a convenient, by Iowa standards, drive from Ames (Iowa State University) and Des Moines (the state capital).  Chicago and North Western gave up on Ames sometime after 1960, while the Rock Island Line was finished west of the Quad Cities early in the 1970s.  That article noted one friend of Amtrak who admitted to prefer the one slow, not reliable, California Zephyr, for Chicago trips rather than endure the fatigue of driving and the traffic jams and parking charges.  Another noted that a coffee shop in the station would make more sense — there currently is none — with a few more trains on the route.  Yes, up to Amtrak day, there was the overnight Denver Zephyr and a long-distance day train, the former Nebraska Zephyr for and from Lincoln, and frequency and connectivity matter.

That noted, I call for Passenger Rail advocates to come up with a better value proposition because "avoid the strain, take the train" was a losing argument sixty years ago.  Yes, that was an actual tagline.  Note when those trains serving Ames and Des Moines quit.  Our British cousins had a comparable slogan.  In those days, WGN Radio had a traffic helicopter or two (eventually aerial spotters of traffic jams proved to be expensive and hazardous to pilots) and a few of their rush-hour reports were sponsored by Chicago and North Western, operating their air-conditioned, Bi-Level Commuter Streamliners.  Their tagline: "Go North Western, it's the very best way to go."  One of the messages had a patter song about the joys of being stuck in traffic.  "Brake.  Accelerator.  Brake.  Accelerator.  Pound your fist upon the dashboard."  For all the good it did.  Your Northwest Side Grabowski could be listening to the WGN traffic reports, and, indeed, watch the Commuter Streamliners rush by while he was doing the brake-accelerator-pound sequence during rush hour on the Northwest Expressway.  And yet he, and all the other Northwest Side Grabowskis, would be right back in the traffic jam the next day, and the next.

THE HIAWATHA DIVISION SERIES.

The Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs are playing for the right to play in the National League's championship series, which for the moment still means representing the National League.  On Wednesday, the Brewers worked with Amtrak and the state operators of the Hiawatha to decorate train 332.  "The 8:05 a.m. departure train on Wednesday will be transformed into the themed Brewers Express, complete with the famous Racing Sausages, the Brewers 4-1 Force, and other members of the Brew Crew who will send off fans headed to this afternoon’s crucial game."

The stock of 332 turns as the 11.08 Borealis from Chicago to the Cities.  The game itself started at 4 pm, and no special return working was laid on.

Fans had to figure out their own transportation from Union Station to Wrigley Field.  Get to the L in the State Street subway and board a train signed for Howard.  Or, for that North Shore Line experience, get on a Ravenswood train at Washington and Wells and ride around the Loop.

Once upon a time, there was a North Shore Line experience on game day.

To the end, the North Shore Line's timetable noted that trains would set down southbound and pick up northbound at Addison on the days the Cubs or Bears played.  The five Electroliners each way (this is the 801-802 set northbound) featured a tavern-lounge section with beer and sandwiches.

THE NEW ACELA IS SLOW.

The latest set of Amtrak fixed-formation electric trains are going into service, and although their suspensions have been improved to allow top speeds of 160 mph either side of Providence and 160 mph in the vicinity of Princeton Junction, they're still hampered by the nineteenth-century track they run on.

The existing track is twisty because it was stitched together out of numerous older railroads, many of which were optimized to the technology of the 1840s, and which originally existed to haul manufactured goods from town to port. The Washington to New York still uses Civil War era routes and tunnels through Baltimore that are almost that old. The electrification on that segment was added during the Depression, using Reconstruction Finance Corporation money. It was enough of an improvement to handle the logistics of World War II. But a high speed line? No. In Depression and War, the fastest and most flexible corridor service in the world was Chicago to St. Paul via four different routes. The New York to New Haven is primarily a commuter railroad that became electrically operated (primarily to comply with Manhattan smoke ordinances) early in the twentieth century. North of New Haven, there is a state-of-the-art electrical distribution system, but the rights of way date to railroading's Pleistocene era. Most of Rhode Island was still empty in those days, making straight line operation possible and providing today's racetrack for the Acela. But the right of way suitable for a high speed line is ... that of Interstate 95. The New Haven Railroad once acquired sufficient real estate for a faster line through Connecticut and western Rhode Island, but, to obtain temporary succour, it sold that real estate to the turnpike authority and then turned a freight profit hauling building materials.

An illustrated elaboration with the distressing details is available for your reading pleasure. "The biggest issues with this section are typically the wires, the age of the infrastructure, and sharing the inconsistent number of tracks."  For example, the Manhattan Gateway is still as Alexander J. Cassatt envisioned it around 1905.

First, we have the Dock Bridge, immediately outside Newark Penn Station, that will be getting a revamp for capacity and strength.

Second, we have the Sawtooth Bridges, east of Newark. These structures are over a century old, and are only double-tracked, but are being given 2 extra tracks, including more separation between the carriers that use it.

Third, we have the Portal Bridge, another century-old structure that’s currently being replaced by the Portal North Bridge directly next to it over the Hackensack River.

Fourth, and I’d argue most notably, the tunnels under the Hudson River.

Dock Bridge is an interesting bit of railway engineering, it is set up to provide a path for PATH (the old Hudson and Manhattan) trains for or from Newark even when the span is raised to clear most Hackensack River traffic; the four former Pennsylvania Railroad tracks get boated.  Portal is an old two-track swing bridge and the machinery is wearing out.  Sawtooth and the North River tunnels are a survival of the Standard Railroad of the World.  Commuter trains leaving Newark would head into Exchange Place station in Hoboken, leaving the tunnels for long distance Pennsylvania Railroad trains.  These days, though, the commuter trains share the tunnels with Amtrak's trains, and single-seat service trains off the Erie-Lackawanna get into the mix at Secaucus.

North of The Pennsylvania Station, those continual curves of the original New Haven Shore Line take their toll.  "Despite rocketing toward Providence at speeds approaching 160mph, the Acela’s average speed between New Haven, CT and Providence, RI is a meandering 68mph."  Any time savings over Amtrak's regional trains come from skipping stops such as New London or Westerly that the regionals make.  But the trains call at Metro Park in New Jersey and Route 128 near Boston, which perplexes the author of the post.  Simplest explanation: not all train riders travel city center to city center, and a peripheral parking lot near an expressway (Metro Park or 128) or an airport (Baltimore-Washington on the Northeast Corridor, Milwaukee Airport on the Hiawatha line) offers that sort of passenger a convenience.

The author of the post calls on readers to volunteer to open their wallets.  "As an American public, it is ultimately up to us to make our elected officials aware of our desire for our tax dollars to be spent responsibly and properly when it comes to passenger rail infrastructure."  That's a Cold Spring Shops point from six years ago.  "But nobody wants to put any money into more direct trackage. News flash: widening the turnpikes isn't going to help either."  Moreover, the road socialism the author contrasts with the penurious appropriations for Amtrak isn't the flex he thinks it is.  "The U.S. interstate highway system took $2 trillion and more than 60 years to complete. $25 billion in one-time capital spending for Amtrak isn’t going to get us even remotely close to what the average NEC train passenger deserves or expects."  The Interstate Highway System is crumbling under the weight of the ever-heavier semi-trailers clogging it, and the political support for spending more on it might not be there either.

NOTES ON AN EXPANDED TIMETABLE.

Validation.  "We've heard that tune before.  'I've invoked that trifecta so many times I should apply for a copyright.'"

Amtrak's Borealis is a second frequency on what used to be the best-served corridor in North America outside the Official Region.  It doesn't connect with much on either end of its run, and its dependability suffers from Amtrak's parlous state.

VALIDATION FOR TRISKADEKAPHOBICS.

The Friday the Thirteenth superstition is one not honored at Cold Spring Shops.

No doubt ferroequinologists out for an afternoon of train-watching at LaGrange Road might have had a "Friday the Thirteenth" moment when a PTL tractor-trailer got sideways with a stack train.

That occurred shortly after 2 pm, trapping the long-distance passenger trains east of this crossing.  They finally got moving around 7 pm, once the line was cleared and tracks 2 and 3 open at restricted speeds.  What remained of the trailer had to be unloaded on track 1 and that took some time.

The eastbound long-distance trains also got caught in the tangle, with the California Zephyr setting its passengers down at Naperville or Downers Grove, Amtrak arranging bus transportation into Chicago, while the Southwest Chief with the "Operation Lifesaver" diesel second out and two Metrolink split level coaches bound for rehabilitation in Milwaukee reaching Galesburg after 6 pm.

By then, some semblance of order was being restored east of Aurora, and delayed passengers were not much more delayed.

The Metrolink coaches went north on Hiawatha 331 on Sunday.  A yard engine will pick them off the rear of the train in Milwaukee and that old Dash-8 diesel will lead on a return move to Chicago.

LET'S RIDE A FAST STEAM LOCOMOTIVE.

Before the War, The Milwaukee Road's Hiawathas were good for sustained running at speeds in excess of 100 mph (161 km/h on the Frenchman's illustration.)

After the War, the diesels generally led the Hiawathas, with the steamers relegated to secondary trains.  Yes, The Milwaukee Road was evaluating additional models of diesels, and online locomotive builder Fairbanks-Morse often used The Milwaukee Road for speed testing.  One such test used the passenger version of the C-Liner cab unit, with five axles the better to carry the load of the steam generator aft.

Trains editor David P. Morgan obtained a cab permit in order to evaluate the performance of these motors on the afternoon 80 Minute Train protecting the 4 pm departure from Milwaukee.  The diesel, however, was not available for that show (perhaps Trains are showing it leaving earlier that day on 28) and when steamer 105 showed up, the railroad's crews asked if Mr Morgan was still interested in riding along.  Yes.

Instead of a Hiawatha behind the 12-wheel fluted tank of your Alco Hudson, there is just nameless No. 46 — an 80-minute 4 p.m. express to Chicago with through cars from Madison. Ahead of you there is no longer the exciting uncertainty of speeds in excess of 120; the enforced limit on the Hi’s now is 100 (and 90 miles per hour for all other first-class trains).

It's been a few years since Cold Spring Shops has offered a Performance and Practice on Amtrak's Hiawathas: these days take your pick of a 3 pm or a 5.45 pm departure for Chicago.  In 1950, 46 was a non-stopper, while todays trains call at the Milwaukee airport, Sturtevant, and Glenview.

Brake shoes release their grip on the tall-drivered 4-6-4, her air horn bellows twice to bring down the crossing gates on the curve at 2nd and Clybourn streets, and [engineer] Val [Ureda] notches back on the throttle. The time is 4:07 p.m., the consist is one old baggage car, five streamlined coaches, and parlor car P-460 from the state capital.

No. 105 stalks under the yellow board atop the signal bridge with her invisible stack making big talk on the grade out of downtown Milwaukee. On the Menonomee River bridge, 84-inch drivers rebel against the force of too much high-pressure steam and slip wildly until Val eases off. Now the speedometer needle has left 20 and is swinging upward to 30 … 35 … 38. A Chicago-bound freight out of Muskego Yard shoulders close by, waiting at the switch behind S-2 4-8-4 No. 214 until No. 46 clears. The Alco 4-6-4 bangs over North Western rails and is hitting 45 within sight of C&NW’s Chase Street Yard and engine terminal.

Freight trains following the passenger trains out of what remains of Muskego Yard are still a thing; that lakefront to the freight belt connecting track of C&NW is now a bike trail.  The through cars from Madison, including the parlor car, were gone long before Interstate 94 replaced State Highway 30 for the motorists.  Making up time is not going to be easy on this trip.

Abruptly Ureda shoves in his throttle and begins working air. A red Mars light is flashing in the distance on the nose of a 5400-horsepower diesel freighter standing on the westbound main, and its fireman is on the ground with a fusee. No. 46 halts while the crew learns that the freight has broken in two and may have a derailed car fouling the eastbound track. Val acknowledges the warning and kicks off his brakes.

The 4-6-4 is angry at this sudden stop on the grade, and has to be coaxed into acceleration. Val knows he is unavoidably 10 minutes or more off the timecard, however, so he can’t spare the rod and spoil the passengers. With her thin smoke trail dusting the gravestones of St. Adalbert’s Cemetery, No. 105 goes under the Wisconsin Electric Power Company’s belt line bridge at Powertown Junction at 45 miles an hour and is topping a mile a minute through Lake, where the summit of the grade is reached.

[Fireman Wallace] Edwards ducks away from his streamstyled cab window as the westbound Olympian Hiawatha rams past in a guttural roar of diesels and a slipstream of coaches and sleepers for the coast. Meantime the cab tied onto the tail of this bounding 4-6-4 has assumed a machine-gun vibration: no punishing jolts or jars at this 60- to 75-mile-an-hour gait, but a rapid clatter made up more of noise than of movement. It is also infinitely more worthwhile than resting behind the windshield of a diesel, you think.

The magic needle is comfortably over the hump at 85 as you approach Sturtevant, junction for a branch to Racine and the “Southwest” main line to Kansas City. Once more Val must choke off speed because No. 23 is making a station stop on the westbound track; otherwise there would be the danger of an indiscreet patron walking across the main at the rear of 23’s last car, right into the blur and suction of the Hudson’s drivers. The speedometer falls back to a crawling 20 miles an hour.

The overpass and interchange with The Milwaukee Electric at Powerton were long gone by the time I started using that site for train photography.  The current airport station is immediately north of the top of the climb at what remains of Lake; departing trains still have their work cut out getting away from there.  The 3 pm Amtrak departure meets the westbound Empire Builder and the 3.15 Hiawatha, your northbound options being that or a 5.08 departure rather than 23 at 4.20, somewhere closer to the Cheddar Curtain.  That stop for 23 at Sturtevant was gone from the timetable by the early 1960s with the Sturtevant stop restored by Amtrak after political pressure in Wisconsin, which lost C&NW intercity service out of Racine.  These days, two trains can call at Sturtevant at the same time, as there is an overhead bridge useful for photographing the Holiday Train, with wheelchair-friendly elevators for passengers going about their business.

Within less than two miles, No. 105 is running 60 miles an hour. The speed is progressively 83 at Truesdell, 88 at Russell, finally (as Val had promised) a cool 90. You wonder now how many times you have traveled the Milwaukee Road at that speed, casually reading a magazine or paper in the coaches, chatting with friends, or dining on a matchless roadbed which won’t spill a full glass of water. And you consider the vast gulf between the calm of the coaches and the life aboard No. 105. Up here men are at work keeping a Hudson hot and taking her home to Chicago at 90 on the nose.

Ironically, perhaps, the 4-6-4 threatens to overshadow her two masters in your mind: the way her tank shoves and bounces behind your seat in the cab; the seasick liquid level in the water glass; the steady green eye from the cab signal box that drops through yellow, flashes red twice and returns to the Irish shade when passing each lineside semaphore.

The train lost no additional time into Chicago.

Chicago ahead: 80 through Mayfair, 75 into Healy, then on down, down, down, to 16 miles an hour at Western Avenue while a North Western commuter train barks out behind a Pacific. No. 105 walks under the C&NW overhead crossing, curves right alongside the North Branch of the Chicago River, and strides into the dark Milwaukee Road side of Union Station. Val brings the train to a saunter, then to a stop at 5:27 p.m. No. 46 has made its 80-minute running time in the face of one stop and two unforeseen speed reductions.

That sort of sharp running past Mayfair and Pacific Junction is still the habit these days.  That "North Western commuter train" went no further than Geneva.  In those days there still were conventional trains calling at DeKalb and Dixon, but Elburn was a time point only.

Editor Morgan did file another report in that issue, on a test of the Fairbanks-Morse diesels on the Southwestern, which used to connect Sturtevant with Beloit, Freeport, and points west.  Into 1965 there was a passenger train between Savanna and Milwaukee, primarily to move an express car or two, secondarily for shoppers in southeastern Wisconsin to get to Milwaukee's high street.

Is it too much to ask for free rein to 125 for the diesels on today's Hiawathas?

LET'S TAKE A TRAIN RIDE.

Somebody might be able to learn something about the mind-set of people in "fly-over country" by riding a train through it.

THE BEGINNING OF AMTRAK.

In Milwaukee, there were three Chicago trips plus the new Empire Builder running on basically the Morning Hiawatha's old schedule between Chicago and the Cities.

The Milwaukee Road, in what I learned later was a unique action, repainted and cleaned up the diesels it assigned to the Chicago turns.  At the time, the morning departure for Chicago and the quittin' time return to Milwaukee offered a lunch-lounge car.

These days there are more frequencies, earlier in the morning and later in the evening, but if you want a bar car, you must bring your own and hope the formation is strengthened with a spare cafe car.

AMTRAK CAN'T CATCH A BREAK.

Last week's Unusual Occurrence Report contained a few doozies.

A fatal private plane crash Friday, April 11, on tracks used by Tri-Rail and Amtrak trains caused cancellation of the day’s northbound Floridian and its counterpart east from Chicago today (Sunday, April 13). Three members of a South Florida family were killed in the crash of the six-seat Cessna aircraft, the Palm Beach Post reports. The driver of a vehicle on an adjacent street was injured. The NTSB is investigating.

In addition, the eastbound Sunset Limited, Texas Eagle, and Empire Builder sustained long delays on their cross-country routes over the weekend, adding to other national network disruptions.

Although Amtrak, Brightline, and two Commuter Rail operators serve Florida southeast of Orlando, rerouting around line blockages is not straightforward.

Florida East Coast tracks can only be accessed through a slow-speed, circuitous industrial connection north of downtown West Palm Beach. Rejoining the Tri-Rail route south of Amtrak’s Hialeah station (used by Tri-Rail express trains to and from Brightline’s MiamiCentral terminal) is also problematic; qualified host railroad pilots would have been necessary to facilitate such complicated moves.

In addition, using one train formation to serve both Tampa and Miami makes maintaining service challenging.

The need for equipment servicing after a two-night trip, normally done overnight at Hialeah, was likely why Friday’s southbound Floridian didn’t assume the day’s northbound schedule. Trains arriving into Tampa must wye east of the stub-end station so they can be backed in.

Thus, although the southbound Floridian arrived at 1:06 p.m. on April 11 and the northbound was scheduled out at 4:45 p.m., Friday’s Chicago-bound train was cancelled. Without equipment, passengers were notified that Sunday’s eastbound Floridian was also cancelled over its entire route. Both the Silver Meteor and Floridian originated at Jacksonville, Fla., northbound through Sunday, April 13, but the day’s southbound arrivals went all the way to Miami.

It was the second major disruption for Floridian service in a week. On April 4, the Chicago-bound Floridian incurred a seven-hour delay after it struck a vehicle between Lakeland, Fla., and Tampa. Running 13 hours late after departing Washington, D.C. at 5:36 a.m. on April 6, the westbound was terminated at Toledo, Ohio. Passengers were bused to Chicago from Toledo and back from the Windy City to the eastbound Floridian as a result.

Elsewhere, the self-DOGEing of the carrier goes on.

Another series of events impacted the Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited, whose on-time performance is joined at the hip. The reason for the westbound Eagle’s nine-hour delay on Union Pacific tracks east of Mineola, Tex., on Wednesday, April 9, has not been reported, but it lost another three hours at Dallas, perhaps waiting for a recrew. Because this was one of the three weekly trains that passes a coach and sleeping car to the Sunset Limited at San Antonio, passengers aboard the Los Angeles-bound train from New Orleans waited more than 12 hours, from midnight Wednesday to 12:17 p.m. Thursday, for the connection from Chicago.

The saga didn’t end there. After the train arrived in Los Angeles on Friday at 6:59 p.m. instead of 4:39 a.m., equipment servicing delayed the eastbound Sunset’s departure that evening by more than an hour and a half. The train lost another four hours between Sanderson and Del Rio, Tex. So  the Sunset and eastbound Texas Eagle both departed San Antonio more than five hours late, severely inconveniencing passengers waiting on both routes.

These were not the only setbacks during the past week. It also included an eight-hour eastbound Empire Builder pause west of Williston, N.D., on Saturday, April 12, and the cancellation of the northbound Palmetto out of Savannah, Ga., on April 6, reportedly because of a Charger locomotive failure. The reasons for the other delays were not immediately available, but they all required Amtrak to compensate impacted travelers and could discourage future business.

There's an understatement.  Against all that, there was one restoration of service.  "[W]ith flooding in western Tennessee subsiding, the City of New Orleans is set to resume its full route in both directions south of Carbondale, Ill., on Tuesday, April 15, after being sidelined for more than a week."

Amtrak timekeeping being what it is, it's probably wise for any passengers boarding today to put their tax returns in the mail before boarding, rather than hoping to be able to file upon arrival.

MORE ON THOSE CORRODED HORIZONS.

More details are coming out about Amtrak's hasty withdrawal of the Horizon fleet of coaches and business-cafe cars thanks to corrosion.  When I wrote, "The reports are not yet detailed enough to establish any connection between ice and water and electrolytically incompatible metals at cars' ends," I didn't know the half of it.

In response to a set of detailed News Wire questions, Amtrak would only confirm that the cars were sent to the shop after “some corrosion” was detected during a periodic inspection. Once the 1989-vintage cars arrived, however, additional corrosion was discovered by Amtrak inspectors “in areas normally not visible.” The company said it had determined “corrosive effects on structural steel accelerated due to the amount of water, ice, and de-icing treatments that have accumulated over the lifecycle of Horizon passenger cars. That result was verified and confirmed by Alstom, the successor to Bombardier Transportation, the original manufacturer.”

Some things never change.  "Corrosion at the anti-climber is common on North Shore cars, which dealt with Milwaukee road salt each winter, and a weekly exterior washup with muriatic acid."  Thus it's likely that any North Shore car you encounter in preservation has probably had new steel installed above the anti-climber and perhaps on the lower side sheets.  Sometimes, there might be Bondo in there, dating back to the waning days of the North Shore.

Those heavy steel cars tend to hold together pretty well.  The Horizons?

Other sources have told News Wire that the cars were sent to Alstom for the purpose of repairing visible corrosion around vestibules and traps. However, when that process began and cars were removed from their trucks, floors or ceilings reportedly buckled or collapsed. Neither Amtrak nor Alstom would confirm this; Amtrak would only say it is “working with Alstom to examine the fleet and address the findings,” though few movements of Horizon cars have been detected since they were sidelined following the initial inspections.

For the present, Superliner coaches freed up from the Colorado ski trains have been used to protect regional services out of Chicago rather than strengthening long-distance trains.  The DOGE boys don't have to do any special research on Amtrak, its record continues to speak for itself.

CORRODED HORIZONS.

As if Amtrak isn't self-destructing without any help from the DOGE boys already, now the Horizon Fleet coaches are self-destructing.

Amtrak trains on several routes have been cancelled after the company removed its fleet of Horizon passenger cars from service because of concerns over corrosion, raising the possibility of long-term service disruptions.

In a statement issued at 9 a.m. today (March 26, 2025), the company said, “We discovered corrosion in several Horizon railcars and, while working with the manufacturer, decided to remove the equipment from service after learning of additional areas of concern from intensive inspections of multiple cars. The removal of this equipment from service will affect services on several routes: Downeaster, Hiawatha, Borealis, and Amtrak Cascades. Some trains, such as the Downeaster, will operate with fewer cars, while other services will be provided substitute transportation until a long-term plan is developed.”

A total of 70 cars — 61 coaches and nine food-service cars — are affected. They are the active fleet from a group of 104 cars ordered from Bombardier — now part of Alstom — in 1988, with delivery completed by 1990. Those cars are based on Comet commuter rail cars built for NJ Transit and its predecessors. The key difference is that the Horizon cars have end vestibules while the commuter cars use a center door for entry and exit.

The more important door might be the end-bulkhead door that these cars lack.  On the northern routes, Amtrak sometimes marshal a formation with Amfleet cars that do have end-bulkhead doors, the better to keep the ice and dust out.  The reports are not yet detailed enough to establish any connection between ice and water and electrolytically incompatible metals at cars' ends.  Whatever the cause, the effect is not winning Amtrak any friends.

Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, operator of the Downeaster, said in an email to Trains News Wire that the train had been operating for several months with one Horizon car and three Amfleet cars. “I was informed last night that the Horizons were being pulled from the service immediately due to the corrosion issue,” Quinn wrote. “Effective today, Downeaster service is operating five round trips daily with three Amfleet coaches in each consist.”

Today’s Borealis has been cancelled in both directions between Chicago and St. Paul, Minn., according to the train status feature on Amtrak’s website, with alternate bus transportation provided because of “equipment unavailability.” Those trains have mostly operated with Horizon coaches along with an Amfleet cafe car, although some recent service has seen substitution of a Superliner trainset. Three of the six Hiawatha round trips between Chicago and Milwaukee have also been cancelled with a bus substitution. The Hiawatha fleet has included a mix of Siemens Venture, Horizon, and Amfleet cars.

The Venture series of coaches for the Midwest regional services (other than Borealis) are slowly coming into service, although not fast enough to replace the Horizons, and there are Horizon cars in the Pacific Northwest replacing the Talgo trains that were taken out of service as unsafe a while ago.

FAILURE HAS CONSEQUENCES, EVEN FOR QUANGOES.

There's a running feature on Cold Spring Shops telling Amtrak "This is not good enough."  A little foul weather has brought the carrier problems all winter.  You might remember January.

That's the close-to-time California Zephyr of last December 2 with the stock of the Carl Sandburg having been turned at Galesburg with a bus in substitution.  That might have been a weather-related event, or it might have reflected a line closure for bridge work, not of the dental kind.

WITH AN AMTRAK LIKE THIS, THE DOGE BOYS DON'T EVEN HAVE TO RAID THE OFFICE.

The all-weather mode hasn't fared so well once the cold snaps began.  Today, for example, is just another annulment for the Empire Builder, and the hits keep on coming.

Add westbound Empire Builder for today (Feb. 19, 2025) to Amtrak’s cancellation list, making for a fifth straight day that the Chicago-Seattle/Portland train will have been cancelled in both directions.

The company has also canceled several Northeast Corridor trains today and tomorrow (Feb. 20), as well as Wolverine and Hiawatha trains in the Midwest.

Today’s westbound and eastbound Builder cancellations have not been listed on the Amtrak Alerts social media feed. A query of the train status section of the Amtrak website now shows both as cancelled; the eastbound train was so listed at midday Tuesday, but the westbound train was still shown as operating on Tuesday evening. No reason is offered, although extreme cold warnings continue today in Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota.

Also canceled today in the Midwest: the scheduled 5:43 a.m. departure of Wolverine train No. 351 between Pontiac, Mich., and Chicago; No. 352, a 2:15 p.m. departure from Chicago for Pontiac; the early southbound Hiawatha, a 6:15 a.m. departure from Milwaukee; and the 8:15 a.m. Hiawatha from Chicago to Milwaukee. According to Amtrak Alerts, the Hiawatha cancellations reeflect mechanical issues and equipment unavailability; the Wolverines were scratched because of equipment unavailability and weather-related equipment issues. Bus transportation is being provided for Wolverine passengers; Hiawatha passenger were booked onto the next available train.

Last week, Thursday's Illinois Zephyr departure from Quincy was unable to run for some reason.  The morning Carl Sandburg did run, and when it reached Quincy, it added the power and coaches of the Zephyr and brought the whole works back to Chicago.  Here it is as recorded by the Galesburg rail camera.

The newish Charger diesels have not been covering themselves with glory ever since cooler weather arrived; and sometimes the formations run with whatever older coaches are available, this despite recent infusion of new coaching stock supposedly to build the Illinois and Michigan network back better.  Nor does the relatively short turns the Quincy trains make help much: recall an earlier screen grab showing the stock of 381 which turned back at Galesburg with a bus bridge to Macomb and Quincy.  That was a consequence of bridge repairs toward Quincy: these days that train has been turning back because of mechanical troubles.

TONIGHT'S RAILROAD READING.

Trains contributor Doug Riddell, a retired Amtrak engineer, makes use of his special knowledge.

All [Seaboard Coast Line] defect detectors were audible, broadcasting the condition of a train and its axle count on the railroad’s radio frequency.

After we uneventfully passed a third detector, the local trainmaster radioed us.

“Rock Train,” he said, “that’s the third time you’ve gotten an odd-numbered axle count. That’s an error. When a defect detector transmits a false report, you’re required to stop and inspect your train.”

“False report?” I asked.

“I’m not aware of any cars with an odd number of axles,” he sneered. “Your crew would appear to be in violation of the rules.”

“Sir, we have a dead-in-tow engine with five axles — two in front, and three on the rear, so the axle count is correct.”

“You are pulling my leg, aren’t you, Mr. Riddell?” he asked, a little hesitantly.

“No, sir,” I said. “Come take a look.”

“No, that won’t be necessary. Carry on.”

A cat might be born with nine lives, but diesels have to go to the works every so often.